Cuneifest is a two-day avant-garde music festival and label showcase in Baltimore, MD, organized by Maryland-based Cuneiform Records, one of the most prominent labels on the international New Music scene. Cuneifest provides not only a glimpse of Cuneiform's broad roster, but more importantly, provides an excellent overview of some of the most exciting, boundary-shattering developments in both jazz and rock music today. Bringing together 11 cutting-edge bands from across the USA (Thinking Plague, Hamster Theatre, Alec K. Redfearn and the Eye Sores, Afuche, Upsilon Acrux, and Zevious on Rock Day, and Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown, The Claudia Quintet +1, Carlo De Rosa's Cross-Fade, Positive Catastrophe, and Ideal Bread on Jazz Day) for a single, ear-expanding weekend in two intimate, sonically significant venues, Cuneifest is aimed for audiences from overseas as well as locally. Audiences can either buy two-day festival passes, or separate day-passes for Rock or Jazz Day. Read more about Cuneifest...
An international force championing avant-garde music in a variety of genres, and especially, music that challenges and transcends genre forms, Cuneiform Records is an independent record label based in Silver Spring, MD, outside Washington DC. Founded in 1984, the label has a catalogue of nearly 350 titles that cover a broad stylistic range, and include some of the most respected musicians in the world of avant-garde and creative music. Cuneiform artists include numerous young, rising-star rock (Afuche, Upsilon Acrux, Beat Circus) and jazz ensembles (Led Bib, Jason Adaseiwicz's Rolldown, John Hollenbeck's The Claudia Quintet,) as well as such avant-garde icons as US jazz artist Wadada Leo Smith, UK jazz-rock group Soft Machine, electronic music pioneer and minimalist composer David Borden/ Mother Mallard (USA), guitarist and electronics innovator Richard Pinhas/ Heldon (France), and Univers Zero (Belgium), inventors of Chamber Rock. The common denominator of this uncommon, artist-friendly label is the singularity of its artists: innovative composers and improvisors whose visions often defy and reshape genre boundaries, transforming the musical landscape for generations to come. Read more about Cuneiform Records...
